7: 31 July and 1 August Gros Morne

August 02, 2018

August 1^st Gros Morne National Park

Twenty years ago I, along with my friends Dunc Ballantyne from Beverly and Dave Balsinger from Wisconsin, hiked the Long Range Mountains in Gros Morne National Park. Although that hike didn’t take me anyplace else in Newfoundland, , Gros Morne was one of the most unusual landscapes I’d ever seen and I promised myself that I’d return someday. Since then I have been nagging Maria to come back here and last winter we decided this summer was the time.

We’re here for two days at Woody Point south of the main park but an area with powerful mountains and fjord like inlets and ponds. Lots of interesting hikes in this area - all day hikes.

Our B&B here at Woody Point is the Bonne Bay Inn. We were having wine last night at the Inn and the music playing in the bar consisted solely of two Eagle tunes, "Lying Eyes" and "Peaceful and Easy Feeling" over and over. I like the Eagles, but........ Kind of funny until it got tiring. After a while I asked one of the staff to check their music program and they switched to what I guess is Newfoundland acoustic music and it was just fantastic. One unknown, but superlative artist, after another. I'm wondering if Newfoundland isn't the acoustic capital of the world, with Nova Scotia a close second.

We took a drive over to the coastal town of Trout River which is technically in the boundary of Gros Morne. A not so fancy coastal town where we walked one of the strangest boardwalks I’ve ever seen. The town is not exactly bursting with economic confidence but it had almost 1000’ boardwalk bounding the beach with a lot of the locals hanging out. How this huge boardwalk ever got built should be an interesting story, but I didn’t inquire.

Also walked around our inn’s neighborhood, Woody Point, and it’s a very fine village.

Crisis on the home front! Got a call from Andrea, Julian’s wonderful wife, who said our dog Maya blew out of the house last night and tangled with some animal in the woods. This morning Andrea discovered that Maya had a puncture wound from whomever she tangled with so off to the vet they went. I warned Andrea not to let this 21^st century vet talk her into giving Maya a kidney transplant or an Ebola vaccine. Vets these days make an owner feel like dog shit when they describe all the expensive stuff “YOU SHOULD” be doing for your dog. Coincidentally, Andrea found a bird who had smashed into one of our windows and was also injured. So off to the vet the bird and Maya went. Maria wonders if the vet will charge us for the bird also. Stay tuned. Andrea feels terrible but we feel terrible for Andrea.

Took a nice hike today outside of Woody Point up to, you guessed it, spectacular views. Big views of Gros Morne Mountain and the Long Range Mountains. Since I’ve hiked that territory I feel I have some street cred or maybe trail cred around here. Later in the day we went to walk the Trout Pond Trail and brought our bathing suits along in case the water was tolerable. The water was tolerable and we changed into our suits on the shores of Trout Pond and had a swim. It felt great since the day was “unusually” warm.

2 August 2018 Gros Morne and Cow Head

Left Woody Point this morning and headed over to the main area of Gros Morne for a big morning hike up to the base of Gros Morne Mt. It’s a 1200’ hike up to the base and another 2000’ to the top of Gros Morne Mt. No way was I going up to the peak and, in fact, I didn’t on my hike twenty years ago. But we got high enough today to see the landscape below for miles and miles. My hike twenty years ago took us through the Long Range Mountains and the finale of that hike was off the Long Range and then around Gros Morne Mt. Today was a cloudy day so the photo colors are somewhat bleached, but maybe one can imagine what an amazing place Gros Morne is.

After the big morning hike we had lunch in Rocky Harbor, the center of Gros Morne tourist activity, and went looking for gift tschotkies for the family. I bought a copy of "The Day The World Came To Town", which is the book the musical "Come From Away" is based on. The rear cover of the book describes how the citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, after 9/11 when 38 US jets were rerouted there, bravely stood up and said to the world "Today,we are all Americans." The phrase “Stand with America” has a long time ago feeling.

Checked in for our last two nights of the trip in the village of Cow Head, north of Gros Morne and on the coast. I had to laugh at how windy this place is. Roberta, our B&B operator, told us that there was a nearby beach we could swim in if the weather improved. I doubt that. We are way north now.

Started raining after we got here so grabbed a burger at a local place and settled in for the night. Very comfortable here at Sea Breeze B&B. I wonder how many “Sea Breeze” B&B’s there are in the world?